AWS-Thinkbox Deal Yields Fruit with Deadline 10 Preview

Amazon Web Services (AWS) on Thursday announced the public preview of Deadline 10, the next version of a render management platform developed by Thinkbox Software, which AWS acquired earlier this year.

Based in Winnipeg, Canada, Thinkbox specializes in high-performance computing solutions for rendering and visual effects jobs. AWS acquired the 7-year-old company back in March for an undisclosed amount.

Deadline is Thinkbox's compute management solution that's designed to help users juggle the various cloud-based and on-premises resources they use for rendering projects, which are typically very compute-intensive and distributed.

Version 10 of the product, which is now available to preview with sign-up here, features deeper integration with AWS.

Also included in the preview are new licensing options. "With flexible third-party licensing options, Deadline 10 customers using AWS resources can purchase software licenses from the Thinkbox marketplace, deploy existing licenses or leverage a combination of the two," AWS said.

A third new feature is the ability to securely connect on-premises render farms to the cloud via a remote connection server, resulting in speedier data transfers.